Both An Italian Sojourn and A German Bouquet commence with music of the earliest, least known, baroquecomposers and progress logically to the great masters of the high baroque and pre-classical. In Italy, this means Castello, Stradella and Marini followed by Tartini, Handel and Veracini; in Germany, Schop, Schmelzer and Muffat followed by Bach (of course) and Pisendel. It is an approach which means that most listeners can look forward to a new discovery or two, and it encourages us to see the familiar in a new light: in 1750, Vivaldi and Bach represented the culmination, not the beginning, of centuries of musical progress...